Like many of the world’s trade unionists, we’ve been closely watching the events unfolding in India over the past months.
On November 26, Indian workers launched the largest general strike in world history, with 250 million workers walking off the job for the day. Those workers, in an alliance with the country’s farmers, were combatting a new set of laws that would radically restructure the way farming in India is conducted.
We were filled with joy and solidarity when we saw, on Jan. 12, that the movement won an important victory. India’s supreme court has suspended the farm laws.
We saw that the ruthless, xenophobic, far-right government of Narendra Modi aimed to “reform” India’s farming system, to make it more “efficient,” to cut back protections for farmers like the minimum support price (MSP), which guarantees farmers be able to sell their crops and have a stable income.
We’ve seen these types of pressures before, from Stephen Harper’s dismantling of the Canadian Wheat Board in 2012—a move that Canada’s National Farmer’s Union described as an “economic tragedy” for farmers, whose income dropped 45 per cent in the aftermath. The same interests that pressured Harper to dismantle the wheat board are pressuring India to “reform” its agricultural system to make it more friendly to big business.
Most importantly, we watched as farmers and workers across India refused to lie down before Modi’s plan. Rather than accepting the plan, they fought—and continue to fight. And they’re winning.
Indian farmers and workers shut down the country by withholding their labour, going into the streets, and protesting. From all over the country, farmers and workers marched on the capital. They made it impossible for their government to ignore them.
As the Supreme Court of India suspended the farm reforms temporarily so that the government could launch a consultation, the farmers didn’t de-mobilize. Rather than participating in a consultation they say is rigged against them, farmers and workers are continuing to fight in the streets—the real source of their power—until the government fully repeals the law.
We have a lot to learn from this movement. Here in Alberta, we’re faced with a government that—like Modi in India—is dead-set on letting big business take complete control over the economy. If our government has its way, accessible public services like healthcare and education will be decimated, replaced by profiteering corporations. Here, in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic, the UCP is working on a plan to privatize 11,000 jobs in healthcare. We are under attack.
But if there is any lesson to be learned from what’s going on in India, it’s that regular working people like us have power when we get organized. Together, we can defeat governments that seem unshakable. Victory is never guaranteed, but if we work together, it is possible.